In honor of Father’s Day, this next post is all about horror’s “bad dads”. We hope your dads are bit nicer and less homicidal than the ones that follow.

Source: CrimeLibrary

1. Jack Torrence (The Shining, 1980) – Arguably the scariest dad of them all, writer Jack Torrence (played by Jack Nicholson) takes a temporary position as caretaker of an isolated hotel during its off-season, where his family will join him. It should be an easy job, and Jack plans to work on his novel during his extensive downtime. Instead of writing, however, he stalks his own wife and clairvoyant son under the influence of the ghosts of people who perished in the malevolent hotel. Torrence is truly terrifying as his mental clarity disintegrates and he succumbs to the whims of the hotel’s menacing undead. Ultimately wife and son must find a way to put a stop to Jack’s homicidal tendencies.

Source: Just Mad About Movies

2. George Lutz (Amityville Horror, 1979) – It is never, ever a good idea to move into a home where savage murders have taken place. You just might become homicidal yourself. Like The Shining’s Jack Torrence, George Lutz (James Brolin) begins to see spiritual manifestations after moving into a new home with his wife and children – which just so happens to have been the site of a multiple homicide. These apparitions have a lethal agenda and they want James to help them. If your dad comes at you with an axe, run the other way!

Source: Le Frelon Vert

3. David Harris (The Stepfather, 2009) – WhenMichael Harding (played by Penn Badgley) returns home from military school, he learns that his mother has a new boyfriend. David Harris (Dylan Walsh) seems like perfect husband material – a charming widower who claims that he lost his wife and daughter in a car accident. But David has some secrets from his past and they’re quite unsavory. Michael’s suspicions begin when he catches David referring to his deceased daughter by the wrong name. He continues to question David’s background and motives when David lies about his college history, and installs padlocked cabinets in the basement, the contents of which he keeps secret and carefully guards. A warning: if you catch your mom’s boyfriend in multiple lies about his past, he’s probably a crazy psycho killer – kill him and then make sure he’s actually dead!

4. Captain Spaulding (The Devil’s Rejects, 2005) – A follow-up to the 2003 Rob Zombie film House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects revisits the sadistic Fireflys, a family of sick and twisted murderers. The clan of deranged serial killers is led by their father Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), a bizarre redneck who wears clown makeup and runs a nearby shop of horrors and oddities. When the cops stage a seige on the Fireflys’ home and arrest Mother Firefly, Baby and Otis B. Driftwood escape and arrange to seek shelter with the father who raised them to be the vicious killers they are. Captain Spaulding and his kids go on a killing rampage as they attempt to evade the law.

Source: The Hollywood News

5. Ellison Oswalt (Sinister, 2012) – Though he didn’t actually murder anyone, I would say that Ellison Oswalt (played by Ethan Hawke) is one of the worst fathers of horror ever. Oswalt is a washed up crime writer who had one huge hit several years back, but has since fallen out of the limelight. He badly needs a new hit to put himself back on the radar and make some major dinero. Oswalt puts his own family in serious danger and jeopardy by moving them into a home where a recent murder has taken place. An entire family, except for one daughter, have been savagely murdered – hung by a tree in their own backyard. The murderer is at large and no one knows where the missing girl has disappeared to. The townsfolk find Oswalt’s desire to write about the murders and move into the deceased’s home to be in extremely poor taste, but he doesn’t care. When he discovers the footage from the murder that took place in the home, as well as some extremely disturbing footage from other similar murders, he realizes that there is a serial killer on the loose. A smart man would take his family far, far away and fast. Instead Oswalt completely disregards the safety of his own family in favor of uncovering the truth of the murders to write his bestseller. He and his family meet and unfortunate an bloody end as a result of his extreme selfishness and thirst for fame.

Do you have a favorite father of horror that didn’t make the list? Let us know who and why he should be on the list. And Happy Father’s Day to all you Dads out there!

It’s almost 5 months into 2013, but since we were chained up for that year and couldn’t get to a computer, we are getting to this post a little late. Better late then never though! Today I’m going to tell you about a few of my favorite horror films of 2012. Rebecca will be here next week to tell you what her favorite horror film of 2012 was! (P.S. It’s my favorite as well!)

It’s very rare that I actually feel scared when watching a horror film. As much as I love them, I have seen so many that I seem to be immune from the feeling of fear I used to get as a kid. The Woman in Black was the first film in a long time to actually get under my skin. The combination of the huge, crumbling mansion, creepy old woman ghost, really disturbing dolls, dead kids, and the foggy setting on the moors of England, made this a highly enjoyable experience for me. Now I just have to see the original!

The second film of 2012 to get under my skin! I guess it wasn’t such a bad year for horror! Ethan Hawke stars as a true crime author who moves into a house where some murders have taken place and stumbles on more than he bargained for! This movie kept me guessing, and I liked where it led to. Like The Woman in Black, creepy children play a part (I just love those little creeps!), and although this took place in a suburban house rather than a run-down mansion, it was still haunting. I loved that this was a different take on the found footage sub-genre- instead of being found footage, its about the discovery of found footage. Pretty unique!

I loved the first film in this series, and had high hopes for its sequel, and luckily it didn’t disappoint. This film primarily takes place in the collector’s lair, and as you’d expect, he’s decked it out with insane traps, including those pesky bear traps. High energy, gory, and never boring, this is a plain old good, bloody time.

So technically this is not a 2012 film, but rather a 2009 film, but it didn’t get a U.S. release until this year, so in my mind that counts! This tale of a deranged high school girl who decides to kidnap someone to be her date for prom was extremely well made, moving, brutal, and has the best ending of any movie I’ve seen in recent memory.

Another film that did not gain a U.S. release until this year, Rabies is actually the first horror film out of Israel, and it is a great one! Good job Israel! When this movie began I was pretty sure I knew where it was heading as it begins like many horror movies before it, but it quickly veered off in the best of ways, and kept me on my toes throughout the entire movie. It was quite hard to watch at times due to the disturbing nature of certain scenes, and the gruesomeness of it, but there were also some darkly comedic spots throughout which helped to give a little breather. This film is definitely worth a watch!